What an incredible site for learning; it couldn’t happen without all the veteran agents and brokers who generously give time to advise new agents. Thank you!!!

I have dreamed of being a real estate agent for years. Love homes, I go to every Parade of Homes within a half a days drive and call them “mom’s superbowls”. I have designed and built three homes of my own. I have a communications & design degree, worked in old-school publishing before staying at home with little ones. The reason I have not pursued this dream is because my husband’s career forced us to uproot several times.

We are now in a city, Duluth MN, we hope to stay in. That brings me to my facebook problem. This area of about 85,000 is one in which the majority of residents (and realtors) were born-and-bred. Local realtors have hundreds of local “friends” on their personal profile pages which they often use to showcase listings. My problem is I only have a tiny handful of local friends.

My husband says the engineers he works with loathe facebook and doesn’t want me to try and “friend” co-workers. I have begun to “mock-up” a website, study books (the class begins Sept.), design promotional material, and become skilled with a professional wide-angle camera - but I’m not sure all the traditional methods of marketing still matter in the wake of facebook and it’s power to connect? Without a large, local facebook sphere do I have the ability to succeed?

I do get out in the community, coach basketball, like to volunteer etc. However, in this strongly provincial area most residents hang with relatives and long-time friends. I’m also older, 42, (but I take care of myself and pass for 30s). I’m afraid facebook has changed the game and not sure if without a local facebook sphere I can compete using traditional marketing tools? What are your thoughts?

Sure you can. You can do well with targeted internet marketing for one thing. Facebook is just one tool at your disposal. Your best bet is to get a good website and start blogging to drive traffic to your site. It will take some time, but you can do it. Find the best/busiest broker in your area, and see how they are with training new agents - go with a brokerage that is successful and offers good training. And do your own research online to find out how to succeed.

Very good tip. Also you can see what agents in your area are or aren't doing as far as marketing themselves. Example would be with sports. If you notice that there are not realtors that get involved with baseketball or other sports the your child might play. Then maybe you might think about sponsoring your childs team or putting a small workshop/training on for the whole team. This puts you in the minds of the parents and people that attend and might benefit from your sponsorship. Or perhaps you can add to your blog site some youtube video's with things that you think might help your friends or attract more people to your site. Also just plain word of mouth can go a long way. When you meet people or friends remind them that you are in Real Estate and there to help. You would be amazed how many relatives or friends forget that their friends/family members are even in Real Estate.

Thank you for the advice. DelCidsRealty comment, "you'd be amazed at how many relatives/friends forget that their friends/family members are even in realestate," is the heart of my problem. Facebook walls and newfeeds are a constant reminder that you are in realestate. A new agent, new to town, without relatives near, and few local freinds hooked to their profile page lacks that connection.

I'm a hardworker with high motivation and a strong graphics art background, so a website and mailing material would come natural to me. I also am a willing volunteer, and I coach and enjoy kids. But I'm wondering if it will be enough to compentsate for my lack of any local sphere on my facebook profile these days competeing alongside born-and-bred realtors in a strongly provincal town who are constantly able to remind their freinds and extended family they are in realestate and willing to help them on their facebook page?

I'm nervous in this day and age that disadvantage of being new to an area without a local facebook sphere to remind everyone I'm in realestate with, may be too hard for me to overcome and all the time and money spent on websites, mailing material etc. will just be money down the drain. Because I'm older with less time to develop, 42, I need to generate enough listings to at least pay for my realtor expenses within two years. I don't need it to live on however.

I can't think of anything that sounds more exciting and fun, and spend hours every day reasearching and learning about all the different aspects from marketing to loans etc. It totally consumes me in a positive way that no other career does. But I have kids I'd like to send to college and want to be realistic - if facebook has changed the rules and I can't play without that base, I need to move on and get real. Do you think the old-school methods of marketing, ie.websites, mailings, door-knocking will still work, or will they be going the way of the newspaper ad?

Websites are not old school! You can't easily display listings on Facebook which is what people want. Facebook is just ONE tool in the arsenal, and I venture to say that while it's important it is not THE most important thing. Definitely do not ignore facebook but it is not the only thing!

You can search out local people on Twitter and follow them and that could build a relationship that could spill over into Facebook. Create a facebook page (different from a profile).

Start a blog but blog SENSIBLY - blog with your target audience in mind, not just a bunch of random real estate factoids or handyman tips.

One place to get good tips and plenty of free info is on the realestatetomato.com website. http://realestatetomato.com/

Also go to activerain.com and sign up for the FREE membership. Then do a LOT of searching for "Blogging for Business" and "SEO for Blogging" and that kind of stuff. Then start your OWN blog (I prefer Wordpress over ActiveRain for blogging) using what you learn.

People on this board poohpooh blogging (and ActiveRain) but that's what helped me sell almost 5 million in closed transactions during my 3rd year in the business. Sure I grew up here but I never was much of a socially connected person. My parents were all but hermits and I am really not a gregarious out in the community type person. And yet, I've done well. You can too if you try hard and WORK SMART.

Perky Realtor thank you for the advice. I have read many of your posts and they are helpful. It's an honor to get personal, heartfelt advice directly from you.

I like the idea about Twitter a lot, I like knowing it's not just one type of personality that can be successful, and I plan on looking into a blog and how I could connect it to a website. I'm not sure I've seen an actual blog on any of the local websites I've visited. There is one guy who puts youtube videos of himself talking about realestate on his facebook page which is pretty clever and interesting, but a little weird at the same time - I couldn't do that. There are several wetsites that add articles or links to articles regarding realestate topics on their site but the realtor is not the author themselves. I need to figure out what the "blog" part is first and then look into incoporating that. What is your blog site called? I'd love to look at it for an idea.

At this point in your successful career perhaps a large part of your current success is becoming referral and familiarity. If you had to move to a new state in a month where you know no one and have no local facebook connnections, and all the local realtors from the area are busy reminding there hundreds of local connections via facebook they are realtors, would you still go for it and start over in the same manner?

Facebook is just a tool as was pointed out. It should not be your main advertiser. I had a friend on facebook that only used it to advertise. I dropped that friend on facebook. People don't want to constantly be hounded on facebook.

I'm friends with Perkey on Facebook. She may feature two properties per month on facebook. 95% of her posts are not real estate related, and when it is, it is very subtle. She does not cram real estate down our throats via facebook. If she did, she likely would loose alot of her friends.

REODayton I agree, some business people obnoxiously abuse facebook profiles. For those who do it right with an occasional mention, or listing, it’s a strong subliminal reminder that you’re a realtor and a “friend”.

I have a hypothetical situation: say your were not a realtor, but in the market for one. You mention on your facebook wall you need to sell your home. One of your 350 facebook friends, a casual acquaintance you see rarely or not at all, is a realtor who posts she’d be happy to help. Would you feel uncomrtable shunning that person and using a realtor that’s not a facebook friend knowing she’d be watching your wall activity about your selling experience?

Or inadvertently, would you be more comfortable using a facebook friend (albeit mild acquaintance level) vs. someone that is a complete stranger, but whose ads you’ve seen or you find kind of appealing.

That’s the scenario I’m concerned about starting in a new town where everyone has been here forever. The city is big enough at 85,000 that pre-facebook it was easy to loose track of mild acquaintence or distant cousins, but facebook rebuilds those old, loose connections. I don’t have that local base; it will take time to build. Time at my age I’m not sure I have enough of. Ultimately, how important do you think knowing a realtor loosely on your facebook page in making the choice? I could make a business facebook page, but I think people are more interested in the juicy personal pages – mixing a little business with voyeuristic pleasure.

I get some referral work. But most of my customers come from my website and/or blog. Which comes first, chicken or egg, blog or website - I dunno. I know some are reading both. Another fraction of my business comes from office floor time (which is why it's important, IMHO, for a new agent to start out at one of the more successful offices in the area that ALSO offers training.) Our office IS one of the most successful ones and that's why we all get quite a bit of leads from floor time.

My blog is http://www.pikewaynepablog.com . Feel free to look. It's pretty bland and boring to many but not to customers.
They read, they tell me about it, and they call me. That's the most important feedback you can get. Who cares if you get comments - I don't. I rarely get comments. But my website gets hits and my phone gets calls and my email gets leads. That's what is important.

Perky Realtor, thanks for your time, I don't want to keep taking it as you are a busy professional, but wanted to mention I visited your website and blog...initially I didn't connect-the-dots that a blog is a feature on a website and thought they were separate web entities of some kind. I haven't discovered a local realtor in my neck of the woods with a blog on their website; it's a nice feature, and I plan on attempting to incorporate one. I also visited your facebook professional page and really liked how you did that. Great ideas. I learned so much. It's very exciting. Thank you for your time and advice.

right now my blog is sep. from my website but i'm working to merge the two. you won't find too many realtors with blogs in spit of the gazillion members of activerain. LOL Or they have one and say they're blogging but all it is turns out to be a few jokes, some recipes, a listing or two and then they give up because they don't understand how it works. :-/ that's fine with me. LOL

It appeared like your blog was connected to the website because initially I went to your website and connected to the blog from there. I did notice I couldn't get back to the home page on the website once I was on the blog, but thought it just a computer glich. Later, I opened up just the blog minus the website. I kinda like it attached to the website, makes for some added interest on the site and a one-stop-shop approach. I'll be watching to see if that can work down the road.

that's the ideal way to go about it (all on one site) and what I'm working on right now. I should have done it that way to begin with but I was operating on a different theory then. LOL

I haven't used FaceBook for much. Most of my business comes from my websites and my natural search results in Google, Yahoo and Bing. I really haven seen a great marketing plan for Facebook. If you can point me to a great FaceBook plan, I'd love to see it.

I stay away from posting to much on facebook much real estate. Maybe a new listing or so get's put on there. Or maybe a blog or so every so often. Facebook friends get tired of a person doing only one kind of status no matter what kind of business it is. I unfriended a friend because she was promoting her life coaching business several times a day. And even know my friends wife who just became an agent in another states is starting to do the same thing.

Like the others a good website is way better then facebook for getting leads. For now anyways. Maybe someday facebook will let us do more real estate marketing in less annoying ways. Don't count it out. Less then 3 years ago I didn't know facebook existed. What is going to be out there in the next 3 years?